Inglourious non-review by a well known basterd

I’d like to write a review of Inglourious Basterds but it seems that so much effort has been spent keeping the real story out of the public eye that talking about it seems like I’m breaking some unwritten law, a law punishable by scalping and getting beat around by a baseball bat. Instead, lets think back to the first time you heard about Inglourious Basterds and how annoyed you were that it was spelt so badly.

We were told that Inglourious Basterds was going to be like the Dirty Dozen, it was going to be about a group of Jewish soldiers going around France fucking up the Nazi’s and leaving there scalped bodies to spread fear to other Germans. Then we saw the trailers, Brad Pitt looking like a war hardy veteran stood before a lineup of afore mentioned Jewish Soilders talking about going around France and fucking up the Nazi’s, then we saw the official poster and there was a pretty girl on it… what the fuck is that about?

Well forget everything you thought you knew about Inglourious Basterds because as usual Quentin Tarantino has totally twisted our expectations of what a World War II movie has to look like or be about. It’s not just the story line either – the use of modern music throughout is totally unexpected, as are the on screen written references with childlike hand drawn arrows that would seem to be more suited to an MTV show than a war epic. Added to that are random cuts to obscure old documentaries about the burning temperature of nitroglycerine and character explaining cut sequences voiced by Samuel L Jackson, both random interjections are a constant source of amusement to me and probably a slice of hell to the nerdy film types who write film blogs with clever names that reference pre-war German cinema in their title.

Also, rather surprisingly, Inglourious Basterds isn’t even about those crazy basterds roaming about the country “killin’ Gnazi’s” either! The plot line is, instead, another Tarantino trademarked tale of revenge set “once upon a time in war torn France”. and the first thing you’re going to have to come to grips with is that Brad Pitt and the rest of the Inglourious Basterds players are just bit parts in this epic story of revenge. The real star of the show is Christoph Waltz who plays Hans Landa the SS’s finest detective, nicknamed “the Jew hunter” and, in my opinion, Hans Landa is the best character that Tarantino has ever created! From the moment we are introduced to Landa early in the first act we are forced to hate him, he is clearly evil and arrogant like a comic book villain, and because of that, immensely enjoyable to watch, with Christoph Waltz playing the part perfectly and stealing every scene he is in.

I don’t know why the trailer was so misleading and didn’t make this obvious- maybe the Weinstiens didn’t think that the story of a Nazi Jew Hunter told mostly through subtitled French and German was going to move units in America (actually yeah I can understand why for the last 2 years we’ve been lead to believe Basterds was a movie about Brad Pitt and some guys causing trouble around the Champagne region now I think about it)…

I don’t want to give away any story details and I certainly don’t want to give away any of the quirky twists (I’ve even omitted a huge chunk of female character information from this already bare bones “review” so as to leave you with some surprises) and it’s killing me that so few people have seen this movie as I enjoyed it immensely! As always the fine line between comedy and violence is tread as if Tarantino was Phillipe Petit and “comedy” and “violence” were the names of the twin towers. The quality of dialogue is consistent throughout and I’m happy to give Tarantino a little time to show off what he’s learned about the world (as long as he never makes us hear it from 4 girls in a car for an hour (with no boobs) again).